Excessive failures hard disks in DL380 G3

[Luis Fernando Ramos]

I have a client with several servers DL380 in racks that there presents a high percentage of failures of hard disk (36,4Gb and 72,8Gb).The racks are in a paltaforma inside a factory of tires. I think that it can be a problem of noise or magnetic influences of the machines.
The question is like it to verify and that it is possible to do in these cases?

[Chris Saindon]

Hello Luis,

I can't imagine the noise of magnetic interference to cause this problem, unless you have huge electric motors directly beside the servers.

I think a more probable cause could be vibrations or shock. If the servers are vibrating often it can decrease the life of the drives, however the vibrations would have to be fairly noticeable.

I would suggest updating the firmware on the BIOS, controller and Hard drives.

The BIOS and controller firmware can be found here:
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/index.html

The Hard Drive firmware can be found here:
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/index.html

Chris

[Chris Saindon]

Hello again Luis,

Something else that can definately cause frequent hard drive failures, and other problems is heat. If the drives always run very warm, they will have a reduced life.

If it is only happening in 1 or 2 servers in a rack, it may also be a backplane failure.

Chris

[Andy_180]

I have had this issue too. look and see if one or more of the hard drive lights are not lighting up the "greeen cylindar". if one or more drives only have the green arrow, you have a bad backplane. its a common issue on the rev E version of duplex backplane. if one or more lights are out, i suggest replace the backplane.
thanks.
--Andy

[Luis Fernando Ramos]

I that the heat and the vibrations are two important external agents who produce failures on the hard disks. For example a hard disk of 10k is less inclined to failure for heat that one of 15k.
The problem that I have happens only with the servers HP and storage works, and not with the IBM that also they have. I am sure that it is something of the environment but cannot demonstrate that it is. The backplane can´t be because it happens in all the servants Hp.